{31 Days to Make a House a Home} Day 3 ~ Be At Home Where You Are

Can you be content to make a home right where you are?  Right now? 

Or are you waiting to make a home when you get a bigger or better house?  Or when you can own your own instead of rent?  Or when your house is "finished"?  Or when the remodel is complete?  Or when you reach your goals and find your dream house?

As I ask you those questions, I am remembering times when I struggled with my own answers. 

Although we have lived in the same house for over thirty years, it almost isn't the same house.  When we moved in, it needed Ty.  (As in Ty Pennington of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.")  It was a drafty old farmhouse with windows that rattled when the wind blew.  It had awkward exterior doorways and windows between interior rooms (results of adding on rooms and enclosing porches).  It had crumbling plaster, and kitchen cabinets with doors that would not close, and two electrical outlets in the entire second floor.  It was hot in the summer (no air conditioning) and cold in the winter (no insulation).  A true "handyman's special"!  Some of our relatives thought we were crazy.  (To be totally honest, I thought the same thing myself.  My husband was the handyman with the vision.) 

We had only had one month to make any repairs before we moved in, and we had decided to do a few things to the large farmhouse kitchen.  We laid a new floor, painted the cabinets and trim, and hung up some discounted wallpaper we had found in a clearance bin.  I hand made some cheery red calico placemats for our kitchen table. 

So we moved in with our baby daughter and began to make a home.

We closed some of those awkward exterior-interior doors to the kitchen, and that one room became sort of an efficiency apartment within our mostly unremodeled, unready-to-live-in house.  (Since the room was large, we had a sleeper sofa pulling double duty...sitting area by day, bed by night.)

Back to the questions I asked at the beginning...

No, I am sorry to say, I was not always content.  But thankfully, I did not wait for my dream house before I made my home. 

We continued to decorate and remodel and change and adapt.  We tore out plaster and replaced windows and refinished floors, all the while cooking and cleaning and living and having friends over for dinner (yes!).  We hung wallboard and painted and moved doors around, all the while sewing and scrimping to buy furniture and teaching our children and hanging wreaths on the (moving) doors and even hosting parties now and then.

It was years—many years—before our house was mostly what we wanted it to be.  But I am so glad that we did not wait all those years to make our house a real home, a home where we lived and loved and made precious memories. 

Whether you live in a rented house, a small apartment, an old farmhouse, or your dream house...accept it as a gift from God (for right now).  Don't waste the years wishing for something better before you begin to make a house a home.

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But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world,
and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 

I Timothy 6:6, 7  

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